Unfinished
by northernexposure
Summary: May at Coulson's bedside, post-5x21.


**Unfinished**

 **A/N:** I woke up with this in my head this morning. Short, angsty introspection from May's point of view, because I suspect that the finale is going to rip my heart right out of my chest, whatever happens.

* * *

She gravitates to his side because she doesn't know what else to do and she can't bear to be anywhere else. Seeing him there, hooked up to machines that beep softly amid the stark walls of the lighthouse's infirmary, is so incongruous as to be dreamlike. The enormity of it hasn't hit her yet, she thinks, as she looks down at the black streaks of sepsis veining his arm. Although in actual fact perhaps it has, because everything else has faded away, and in her mind there is only this: Somewhere out there a madman who used to be their friend is about to destroy the world and here, Philip J. Coulson is lying on a gurney, dying. Saving one of them means losing the other and she, Melinda May, already knows that she's willing to let the world _burn_.

The others have left her to it. No one demands her time, her attention. No one asks her advice. Simmons floats in and out, looking at machines here and there, noting his vitals, checking the drip that feeds into his arm. May wonders, briefly, what the younger woman sees on her face and knows that whatever it is has been enough to elicit this silence. Her defences have gone. He ripped them from her when he pulled her behind that shield, when he did what they should have done months ago, years. Everything is showing on her face, and she knows it. She wonders if it would be showing on his, too if he were conscious. She suspects it might be, and the thought is a blade through her already lacerated heart.

The last time she saw him awake was through a computer screen, and it was enough to turn her heart over right there in her chest. _Tell me you have them_ , she'd heard him plead, and then there he was, with that look in his eye, as if out of everything they had just witnessed, the sight of her was the only thing that truly filled his vision. She'd been smiling, then. Grinning like an idiot, probably, she thinks, teasing him just as she always had, way back when they were young and idealistic, back when they'd been audacious enough to think that they could be the ones to save the world and still come home whole afterwards.

What fools they had been, to imagine that time was infinite, that life was assured. That they, of all people, had enough of both to waste.

She can't think, now, _why_. Why did neither of them make a move sooner? What possible reasons could they have had for forestalling? Notwithstanding the time-travelling, end-of-the-world, must-save-the-planet-from-aliens craziness that has dominated their lives for so long, there must have been a reason, surely? Something beyond all that, something more significant, something solid that would help her now. Because she'd told him she loved him, and he knew her well enough to know that it wasn't words she needed back but action. Because between the bullets in a firefight is where he'd been waiting for her, as if he'd been there all along and all either of them had ever needed to do was take a step towards each other. It wasn't even a leap, in the end. It was just a step. It wasn't even a _big_ step, it was just the next one. And it had taken them too long, too long.

At some point she realises that she's tired enough to drop, and at the same time notices that a chair has materialised beside her. Simmons, she thinks, though she has no idea when she brought it or whether Jemma said something to her as she put it down. May can't remember the last time the younger woman came into the room, has no idea how long she herself has been standing there. She lifts the chair, moves it closer to the bed and then sinks down into it, suddenly aware of the biting pain in her thigh. That fight had been the first time in a while she'd really put her body through its paces, and now it is beginning to complain. Still, at the time she'd felt more alive than she had for months, energy coursing through her like fire. It was funny, really, how action begets action, how one tiny spark can become a fire. Phil had lit a fuse with that kiss and the flame had burned along her synapses, leaving the bright glare of possibility in its wake. Everything lately had felt like an ending and then, suddenly, there was a beginning.

She watches his face beneath the mask, how his lashes cross the lines that years have carved into his face. She can remember the first time they met, how she'd instantly pegged him for a desk-jockey, as a nerd who'd never make it in the field alongside the more obviously tough guys. He'd surprised her immediately and intrigued her almost as quickly. It had been an extra-curricular sparring session and they'd been put in a pair. His hairline was already receding, and she'd seen the glasses he'd removed and left with his kit at the side of the room. The assumption she had drawn from these two things had deceived her and taught her a valuable lesson at the same time. He'd thrown her, without deference to her gender or their relative heights. He hadn't hesitated, or been nervous. He'd come at her on the mat and flipped her over so quickly she hadn't even had a second to react before her back had hit the cushioned floor. Yet there had been no look of triumph on his face: no indication at all that he knew he'd just bested the student considered top of this particular skill set. He'd just stretched out his hand and pulled her up, ready to go again, expecting her to give it her all the way he had and always would. She'd known there and then that she'd met someone who truly understood the meaning of respect.

She's been thinking about that day for the past few months. Wondering if there hadn't been something there, even then. Wondering, actually, whether a fuse had been lit the moment her back had connected with the mat.

 _Don't go,_ she wants to say. _Not yet. There is so much about us that is unfinished._

There is a movement at her side and Simmons is there. The younger woman gives her a wan smile, tentatively touches her shoulder.

"May," she says, softly. "Why don't you go and get some rest? I'll call you the minute there's any change, I promise."

"I'll stay," she says, and the words come out as a croak. Her mouth is as dry as desert sand.

A moment later Simmons squeezes her shoulder again. May looks around to find her holding out a glass of water. "Thank you," she says, the words a whisper, a faint susurration in that crowded, sterile room.

Simmons opens her mouth as if to say something, then seems to think better of it. She's walking away when May speaks again.

"Jemma," she says. "How long?"

Simmons turns and looks at her, her eyes troubled. She shakes her head. "There's really no way to know."

"Weeks?" May asks. "Days? Hours?"

Jemma looks down at her hands with a frown, then looks up again, meeting her eye. May appreciates that.

"Days," says the younger woman.

May turns back to the bed. She puts the glass down on the floor and reaches for Phil's hand. With one finger she traces the outline of his thumb, wondering if he can feel her, hoping that he can.

[END]


End file.
